Lunching under the stars.....

We lunched under the stars. (It's possible).

With a star .

I think bloggers get a 7 month itch. They have to meet. And eat. Last time it was December. And this time we beat the Bharat Bandh (recently announced opposition sponsored nationwide total strike) by 2 days. Which is good, because we had folks coming in all the way from Indore and Pune, and they need to get back home safely.

We've never met in such an upmarket place before.

I started out early, with visions of rain, bad roads, traffic, and water logging, none of which had happened by then, and I ended up reaching much before time.

There was this beeping entrance thing through which you walk and they check if you are carrying dangerous things. My stupidity or patriotism must have shone brightly on my face, because as I ventured to pass through the contraption, two guys hurriedly signalled that I needn't, and that I could simply make a normal entrance. I found myself sitting in solitary splendour in the deserted lobby of this four star hotel, half and hour early, with fellows in suits and ladies in chic sarees giving me looks as they bustled around. The only excitement was provided by a young girl who looked she just stepped out of Femina, with a really short denim miniskirt, silver gladiator sandals, carefully arranged tousled hair, a fancy phone and a desperate expression on her face as she paced back and forth .

Couldnt be a blogger ....

I had this book about Zebras and Ulcers , some ongoing reading, that I had brought along just in case I had to wait, but it didn't fit in with the overall ethos of an impending lunch, and I gave up. Made some calls to bloggers. And settled down to wait for folks.

Like the retired one who suggested this place.


Followed by someone who normally used to come with luggage to catch a bus later to places 200 kms away, except this time he was staying.

The professorin, and the lady lawyer, all slim and svelte , arrived shortly.

Followed by our marathon person. I always watch with interest when folks arrive with heavily laden bags.

The 2 out of towners arrived next.

One of our group , was not going to make it this time. But we would call her between the salad and the dessert .

There were to be three new people this time. Two young ladies, who had heard about these meets and were delighted to join, and a young chap, who probably reads more blogs per week, than all the rest of the bloggers combined, and also has a blog of his own, besides twittering.

The young chap soon arrived, and was immediately put to a test of figuring out who was who. He knew a couple of us, and it was fun watching him mistakenly identifying folks as someone else.

In the meanwhile, the rains had started in earnest, and we worried about the whereabouts of the two new young ladies who were coming from some distance away, almost as if from another town. Took some time off to call our blogger friend who had been unable to come, and everyone spoke to her.

When so many blogger types converge around a buffet, filling plates with single minded devotion in between dedicating themselves to Pani Puri and Amiri Khaman, the other customers just stay away for a while. You never know when someone with Chilly Paneer may turn around and collide with you and crush the Farmers Pie in your plate, or spill some Dal Fry.

We kept looking at everyone who entered the place. This seems to be a permanent feature of all our blog lunches. Some people get lost and arrive later.

We were finally rewarded with the sight of two new members, none of whom we had met before. (a few folks had.) And with them came the littlest surprise member of the blog lunch, like a fresh ray of early sunlight in a dull and rainy cloudy day.

He was promptly established at the head of the table, and he proved to be a role model to certain gluttonous folks, by having a lunch of tomato slices, cucumber slices, carrots, a bit of rice, watermelon pieces, and would you believe, just a pinch (and what a small pinch of a small hand it was) of chocolate pastry , exhaustively licked off his own index finger!

A large group means there are conversation pockets. Everyone cannot talk to everyone all the time. But there's technology to the rescue.

Because, secretly unknown to us, the outside world was slowly being informed of things happening in the bloggers lunch. (I must hasten to add that we dont know Shashi Tharoor or Sweat Equity. All we know is Khana Zaroor and Net Activity)

In a terribly hi tech way, by a phone as follows :


"The blockers meet ! "

"I mean...the bloggers meet..."

"Desserts sink in with no trace !"

"In the midst of blogger babble and excitement! "

"The best things in life are edible."

And then after sufficient eating ......

"Bill payment ! Time flies.."

"The blogger meet ends.. Just about !"

"Do you have extra fifties please ? Small change comes in big time handy ! "

"Photo sessions done !"

"Bloggers meet disperses"

"Wonderful conversations in the bloggers meet. Can't believe this was the 5th meet !"

And I thought this person was a bit quiet and looking down at his phone, as a way of surreptiously guarding a big bag carrying several great containers of marathon-special payasam, kept under the table at his feet.......

One of the young ladies got a call from family folks coming to pick her up, and she came around with some wonderful packets of teekha sev for us, a speciality of the place she lives in; and this had been carefully carried around from place to place as she travelled the entire previous week across two states and several cities.

The tangy and spicy was followed by the sweet and creamy, and we were all suddenly recipients of wonderful containers of payasam, prepared for us and carried to the lunch by the marathon man, of course, inspired by his wife.


Several photographs were taken, some of which would probably delight toothpaste companies as wonderful ads for teeth. The staff at the place was so impressed that they took some photos for us.

A wonderful curved staircase , like in the movies, had some of us posing holding the banisters, while the others congregated on various steps. Most other hotel guests had long since given up on us, though I thought we were being greatly courteous allowing them to pass down the stairs.




Fortified by some totally unnecessary trips to the buffet, and with a sense of wellbeing , imagining a rainy afternoon with tekha sev and payasam, to be followed, in our imagination by adrak/ginger tea, we relaxed, leaning a bit back in our chairs, and were rewarded with the sight of a dark sky studded with stars, on the ceiling.

Some clever lighting , that.

Outside, the rain was pouring down. Forays into traffic beckoned. Waterlogged roads, Splashing. Folks going in the same direction decided to travel together, and so many of us got rides home from those going to those areas. It was almost peak traffic time, with folks driving in a frenzy, avoiding potholes, cursing darting ricksahws and pedestrians suddenly trying to cross the road, and pizza delivery chaps taking inverse U-turns.

It didn't really matter.

We had met after a long time....We had had a wonderful Bloggers lunch.

A great afternoon , with lots of laughs, ribbing,food and friends.....

Under the stars.

And with a young star.

Possibly a future blogger learning the ropes .

And he is just two years old !!!!


P. S. One of the new lunch members burst into verse on gmail later.....:-)

Jo kal tak bas ek naam the, unhe chehre ki aaj pehchaan mil gayi

Khayalon se hum jud gaye is tarah, ek anokhi si dosti ki shuruwat ho gayi

Wah ! Wah ! Wah !

That "Maika" Feeling........... माहेरची माणसं

One of the things peculiar to the institution of marriage in India, is the concept of "Maika/Maher" or "parental abode" and "Sasural/Saasar" or the "in-laws' abode". This concept is very women centric; these entities are treated very theoretically in the case of the groom. These two concepts of Maika and Sasural, stand strong and permanent , in, what I call, minds of middle class type folks, regardless of whether the married couple stays on their own or with the extended family. Somewhere in a far corner of a female mind that swears by nuclear families, is a small neuron that has definitive opinions on the topic.....

By definition, going from the Maika to the Sasural, is like going from green sylvan surroundings, to a scheming jungle. The Maika has all the good people, and the Sasural has folks just waiting for you to arrive , so they can practice all their bossy , and sometimes evil, greedy tendencies. While all these concepts , today have faded into a place closer to oblivion , popular cinema and theatre, continue to show this, sometimes even as a parody.

There is , a well defined part of the wedding events, that is called "Bidaai" or bidding farewell to the bride. Actually, throughout the religious ceremonies associated on the wedding day, there is an undercurrent of the fact that a daughter is being "given" to another family, that she is now the responsibility of the elder seniors of the new family and so on.This particular "giving the daughter away" ceremony is actually a precursor to all the tearful events that happen during the day.

During the "Bidaai", the girl bids farewell to her parents and other extended and close members on that side. There are ,on part of the bride's family, publicly, lots of tears, crying, uncontrollable sobbing, and touching of old feet respectfully, as the husband, after a decent interval, hints that they need to go, and the bride, with glistening clothes, eyes and jewels, makes her way to a fancy car.....[It has been recently been parodied to ridiculous extremes, in a commercial for Pampers, where the happy gurgling of baby, ( consequent to not feeling wet due to wearing Pampers diapers), carried by a relative, makes everyone laugh at the Bidaai ceremony , instead of cry ...]

In my community, a daughter's second name is her father's name. When she gets married, the second name changes to her husband's, along with her last name, also her husband's. As if this changing of two names wasn't enough, there is, sometimes, a peculiar custom of wilfully changing the bride's first name too, after marriage, and everyone is kept guessing till the husband writes it with his finger in a big plate full of rice, at some point in the wedding festivities. Sometimes, it is a surprise even for a bride. Sometimes names are changed to complement the husbands first name. I know a case of someone, whose name meant "an ocean", and the in laws changed his wife's name, in the wedding, to something that meant , "river"....

And so it gives rise to running into, who you think are unknown people, but end up being your classmates from 30 years ago....all with a completely changed name. In today's day and age, when the boy and girl get many opportunities to meet and get to know each other before marriage, it so happens, that the husband continues to address his wife by her old name, while stubborn senior in laws practice the new name......

There are varying degrees of comfort and /or noncomfort that one associates traditionally with Maika and Sasural.

Even today, the wife returns to her parents' home for her first delivery. Its a joyous homecoming from a world of minding p's and q's, performing gestures of respect to prescribed folks, to a place where you can sleep late, be fussed over your eating urges while pregnant, meet all your old childhood friends, and chat away into the night..... Long after the children have arrived and are school going, it's not unknown for women living in a town, different from their parents, to come for a longish visit to their folks, when the children have vacations. It gives the grandchildren, an opportunity, to get to know their maternal relatives, and gives the woman a respite from the busy life she leads otherwise, catering to so many lives and routines. Grandchildren are known then to eat stuff they refuse to eat in their own homes, and my daughter has been known to loudly declare to all and sundry, that I was incapable of making french beans a particular way, like my mother....

And so there is a concept that defines friends, on how much of a "Maika' feeling you get with them.

There are friends, where you strive to be proper, a notch higher than you normally sit, you praise their cooking, admire their house and garden, offer to help with things post-lunch where things have been just-so; you turn a blind eye, to something not-so-nice, that their children are up to. You don't feel comfortable wandering into their kitchen, and always get the feeling that there is a secret meaning (which you don't get) to whatever they are saying. And their house is NEVER in a mess. These are friends, who always say nice things to you. They shy away from making critical comments.These are the Sasural types.

And then there are those, who you go see unexpectedly, and they will tell you to grab a plate and sit down for dinner because someone is making hot chapatis, and they know you have a thing about them. They know you gorge on pickles, so they will bring out their latest homemade special mango pickle, and not raise any eyebrow, as you put in a finger to grab a piece. If they know you are coming, they will ask what to make for dinner, and your answer is always about comfort food and never about the gourmet variety. These are friends, where you sit cross legged on a chair and polish off your plate, wiping the wonderful flavours till the plate gleams, and no one thinks you are becoming uncouth. They will tell you if they are worried about something, a child or an event, and you are always part of seeing a solution. These are folks who don't get into a dither when you casually open their fridge to see what good stuff resides inside. And they don't think twice about telling you off if the occasion so demands...


Having said that, it would be wrong to say these Maika and Sasural classifications are rigid. Times have changed. There is more education. More awareness and respect.

There are families where a girl is considered lost and gone from her own family once she is married. She is called "Paraya Dhan" or "Someone Else's bounty" , and her parental family will have nothing more to do with her....

There are situations where a girl , widowed, is treated like their own daughter by her earlier in laws , and given away in marriage later (like they would, their own daughter) , in an effort to settle her down again. I have known people who did this and the quietly faded out of the picture to allow their earlier daughter-in-law to make a new life, unencumbered by things that would remind her of an earlier life.

Many like to describe friends as good friends, best friends, "fast" friends, the last a typical Indian phrase.

I like to classify friends as sasural or maika types. Some very good and proper , and some that give you a comfortable feeling of having come home. Respectively.

It is interesting making friends in the blogosphere. There is something that draws us to certain blogs, and allows us to skip over some blogs.

What is even more interesting, is that I get a gut feel, of which of them are maika types and which of them are sasural types.

I wonder if this happens to anyone else .....